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HBO Apologizes for Bush Head in ‘Game of Thrones’ DVD

By Dave Itzkoff June 14, 2012 7:53 amJune 14, 2012 7:53 am

3:45 p.m. | Updated

HBO has apologized for a scene in its hit fantasy series “Game of Thrones” that showed the decapitated head of former President George W. Bush on a pike and said the scene will be removed from future DVD releases.

In the audio commentary on the Season 1 DVD release of “Game of Thrones,” the show’s lead producers, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, pointed out that a scene showing the heads of several vanquished warriors included Mr. Bush’s, obscured under a long wig but recognizable in profile.

“The last head on the left is George Bush,” the producers say in the audio commentary. “George Bush’s head appears in a couple beheading scenes. It’s not a choice, it’s not a political statement. It’s just, we had to use what heads we had around.”

The DVDs were originally released in March but gained widespread attention after this commentary was posted on the Web site io9.com.

HBO said in a statement: “We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this careless mistake. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms and have halted all future shipments of the DVDs, removed it from our digital platforms and will edit the scene for all future airings on any distribution domestic or international.”

Mr. Benioff and Mr. Weiss said in their own statement: “We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, et cetera. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush.”

The producers continued: “In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former president and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.”

A version of this article appears in print on 06/15/2012, on page C4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: HBO Apologizes For Bush Scenes.